52
The Green Bag
he may turn the same over to his cor poration. The plan originally devised by the parties being deemed by counsel an evasion of the law forbidding usury and making the lender a criminal, is rejected as illegal. Upon sound advice the transaction is changed in form, and the loan at the excessive rate is made not to the individual B, but to his cor poration upon its note guaranteed by B; this course being legal under the deci sions of the New York Court of Appeals. (See Rosa v. Butterfield, 33 N. Y. 665.) Pursuant to advice of counsel, parties in Tennessee gave notes dated, payable and secured in Arkansas at a rate of interest allowed there, but not in Ten nessee. The U. S. Circuit Court (Mr. Justice Jackson) sustained the trans action, denying the contention that thereby it was intended to evade the laws of Tennessee and saying, "It was certainly intended to obtain the Arkan sas rather than the Tennessee rate of interest. That intention was no viola tion or evasion of the law of Tennessee." ( Van Vliet v. Sledge, 45 Fed. 743-752.) The tariff of 1883 imposed a certain duty upon dress goods wholly of wool and a lower duty upon dress goods only partly of wool, provided that the higher duty should be charged upon goods of wool with threads of other materials introduced for the purpose of changing the classification. The importers caused goods to be woven of wool with a very slight intermixture of cotton, not in the form of threads. The collector deemed this to be an evasion of the law for the purpose of changing the classification, and levied duty at the higher rate. But both the Circuit Court and the Supreme Court overruled the collector and sustained the importers, holding that "they were not prohibited from so manufacturing goods as to conform to a lower rather than a higher exaction of
the tariff—and that though they might have adopted a very technical device to escape the higher rate, the question presented by the case was only whether their goods were embraced within the higher rate and not whether they had evaded the law." (Magone v. Luckemeyer, 139 U. S. 612.) In the case of KeUey v. Rhoads (188 U. S. 1) it was held that a flock of 10,000 sheep driven from Utah to Nebraska at the rate of nine miles a day across Wyoming, and grazing as it moved, was a subject of interstate commerce and therefore exempt from the Wyoming tax on livestock brought into that state for grazing purposes. The fact that the sheep might have been moved by rail was disregarded, for "the owner had the right to avail himself of such means of transportation as he preferred, and in estimating the probable cost he was at liberty to consider the fact that he was licensed to make use of the public lands of the United States for the sustenance of his sheep. . . . We do not deny that it may have been the plaintiff's intention not only to graze but to fatten his sheep while en route through Wyoming. Indeed we may suspect it, but there is nothing in the agreed state of facts to justify that inference." William M. Prichard, an honored mem ber of the New York bar, died leaving a will by which he appointed as executors three lawyers, two living in New York and one in New Jersey. For the pur pose of escaping New York taxation the securities of the estate were deposited with a company in the home of the New Jersey executor. Upon the suit of Mr. Charles C. Beaman, executor, and the argument of Mr. J. Hampden Dougherty, it was held that these securities were not taxable in New York, the Court observing: "The suggestion is made that if this rule is to prevail it furnishes an
